National Semiconductor Geode GX1 ?

[Christer Weinigel]

[Stefan, sorry for the second copy, I forgot to do a wide reply in
gnus.  *still learning gnus*]

Stefan Reinauer <stepan at suse.de> writes:

> * Bari Ari <bari at onelabs.com> [021129 18:44]:

> > Has anyone tried to load the SMM/VSA as a binary using the Xpressloader 
> > source with LinuxBIOS to have SMM/VSA working?

> I've looked at it but did not follow it further. Seems like VSA1 has
> some 16bit interface, but i am not sure about vsa2. so basically one
> would have to find a proper place during system bootup and just jump
> into the binary, taking the structure of vsa binaries into regard.
> any hints on known pitfalls? Christer?

IIRC, the VSA2 BIOS requires a few INT 15H services to work, so with
Bochs in LinuxBIOS it should be possible to just do as you say.  The
exact procedure is documented in some NatSemi document that I don't
know if I have access to anymore.

How about the licensing?  I think the VSA BIOS freely available from
NatSemi if one gets the XPressROM kit from them, but what does the GPL
say about calling a binary object?  In my mind there is no linking
done if a GPL:ed application contains a binary blob which it
uncompresses into memory and then jumps to an address within the blob,
but people were quite anal retentive about GPL:ed applications using
the Qt toolkit a few years ago, so there could be trouble.

  /Christer

-- 
"Just how much can I get away with and still go to heaven?"

Freelance consultant specializing in device driver programming for Linux 
Christer Weinigel <christer at weinigel.se>  http://www.weinigel.se